The blonde huldra picked up the reins and shot an enquiring glance at Shrike.
“To Blackthorn Briar,” said Shrike. “An’ it so please you.”
With a sharp nod and a flick of her wrists, she set the sleigh in motion. Silver bells rang out through the wood as they went. Pines flew past in a blur of green.
Shrike hardly noticed them. His gaze dropped to Wren in his arms. Only his face remained visible, asleep and serene yet pale as ice. A spike of desperation pierced Shrike’s heart. His handdelved beneath the furred folds, seeking, until it found Wren’s cold fingertips and clasped them close.
And, though the whipping wind tore the sound from his lips ere he spoke it, he whispered, “Hold on.”
~
Blackthorn Briar hadn’t seen so many souls all together since the Summer Solstice. This gathering proved far less festive. Nell, the ambassador, the wolf, and the faun had all accompanied Shrike and Wren not just to Blackthorn but into the very cottage. Shrike felt more gratitude than he could express at their willingness to abandon the hunt for the white hart. He wished he could show them better hospitality. Yet he couldn’t tear his gaze from Wren, much less offer food or drink or good company.
Nell, as she so oft did, made herself quite at home—this time much to Shrike’s relief. She took the copper kettle down from where it hung in the rafters amidst dried lavender and other herbs, filled it with water from the hollow stump, and hung it over the fire Shrike had stoked to a blaze in a feeble attempt to bring warmth back to his beloved’s body. Shrike didn’t take much notice of her doings until she pressed a steaming mug of tea into his hand some moments later—he knew not how long, for he’d not taken his eyes off Wren all the while. Now, glancing ‘round, he found her handing off another stoneware mug to the faun and setting the third on the night-stand beside Wren’s sleeping head. Likewise she set out a clay bowl for the wolf. For herself, she had her tin cup from her hunting pack, and the ambassador produced a delicate porcelain cup of his own from his clanking satchel. The matter of tea seemed settled without Shrike’s interference, and so he returned his focus to his Wren.
Shrike felt well-accustomed to performing chirurgy on himself. The myriad scars that bedecked his body attested tothat. He’d even done it for Nell now and again in the midst of particularly bloody hunts.
Now, however, as he gazed down on the frail form of his beloved, half-curled in their bed, with shivers still passing over his skin despite the quilt and furs tucked around him and the fire roaring in the hearth of Blackthorn’s cottage, Shrike knew not where to begin.
Mortals were far more delicate than fae. While, unlike fae, their flesh could withstand things their spirit could not, so too could their spirit withstand far more than their flesh might bear, and so they oft slipped away from wounds which fae could endure for years.
And as he gazed on Wren’s sleeping face, his heart stayed his hand.
“Is there anything more the Court of Hidden Folk may do?”
Shrike flinched at the faun’s voice, low and soft though it sounded. He turned to find them looking as startled as himself at his reaction. He supposed, now that he beheld them perching their hip against the rim of the hollow stump, that they couldn’t stay long; the Mistress of Revels needed her sleigh and steeds returned.
Still, before they left, Shrike had one request. “Does any member of your court have the skill in chirurgy to save a mortal life?”
The faun worried their lower lip between their teeth. “I don’t know. But I may enquire. If there is one who can, we shall send them here.”
Shrike nodded. The faun bowed and departed the cottage.
“More tea, my lord?”
Shrike snapped his head ‘round to regard the ambassador. The ambassador, however, was not looking at him but rather delving into his clinking satchel.
“It would do some good, I think,” the ambassador continued. “Particularly if we were to add a dash or so of this.”
From his satchel he produced a round bottle about the size of a crab-apple. The pale pink liquid within swirled with a streak of darker pomegranate shade.
Shrike stared at the ambassador, then the bottle, then the ambassador again.
“A tincture of heart’s-ease,” the ambassador explained. “For—well, the obvious purpose, I suppose. Unless you would prefer something stronger,” he hastily added in response to Shrike’s increasingly incredulous stare. “There’s an elixir of poppy essence and distilled—”
Shrike had no intention of taking anything. He had no need of physick for his own body. Wren needed all. Yet, rather than any of this, what fell out of Shrike’s mouth when he forced it open at last, in words so dull they almost defied enquiry, was, “How is it you are so bedecked with potions?”
The ambassador blinked. “My brother is an apothecary and alchemist of some renown.”
“In the Court of Spindles?” Shrike couldn’t keep from wondering aloud, his astonishment proving too great to restrain. Strange enough that a noble bloodline in that realm would suffer a single son to live, let alone two.
The ambassador’s cat-slit eyes flew wide behind his mask. For the first time in all their brief acquaintance, Shrike heard something approaching fear in his voice as he replied, “No, no—well, he was, yes, but he escaped it some years hence. I followed in his footsteps. He dwells in Fathomseek now.”
From whence the mortal half of Nell’s family hailed. Disparate threads Shrike had observed throughout the years began to weave together before his mind’s eye. “And there he tends mortals as well as fae?”
“Indeed,” the ambassador said, sounding relieved to have moved on from the subject of his own ancestral realm.
“Would he tend…?” Shrike’s voice faded as his eyes fell again to Wren’s pale sleeping face. The bespeckled lips had not yet regained their rosy hue. He cleared his throat and tore his gaze away to see how the ambassador might answer.
